With the beginning of the brand new season of the English Premier League (EPL), there can be further changes within the operation of the VAR (Video Assistant Referee). VAR was introduced within the EPL in 2019 to Reduce the number of incorrect refereeing decisions, including offside decisions – but his use continues to be heavily criticized.
Video replays of referee decisions are reviewed in real time by referees and other officials on site. Stockley ParkWest London. The advice of those officials and the video of the decisive moment are then transmitted to the referee on the sphere to make sure the correctness of his decisions.
The EPL claims the proper decision has now been made 96% of the time, in comparison with 82% previously before the introduction of VAR. Academic research has also shown a Improving decision-making following the introduction of VAR, which reviewed around 1,300 EPL match events last season.
One of the largest criticisms of VAR is the Time required to perform a reviewand the EPL will soon begin using artificial intelligence (AI) to unravel this problem.
Semi-automatic offside technology (SAOT), as already mentioned within the Football World Cup Qatar 2022 And 2024 eurosuses AI for high-speed tracking of players with a high level of detail.
It is estimated that SAOT can reduce the time for offside decisions by as much as 31 seconds. It also provides television viewers with a clearer picture of those offside offences. Instead of manually drawing two blue and either green or red lines across a picture of the pitch, SAOT creates a virtual vertical curtain that shows exactly which a part of the player's body is offside.
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The technology relies on computer vision systems that may track as much as 10,000 surface points of every player and the ball. It can discover players with a Speed ​​of 200 updates per secondin accordance with Genius Sports, the info company that won the EPL's SAOT contract.
This highly detailed and fast tracking is made possible by modern AI and deep learning algorithms – a technology that simulates the way in which the human brain makes decisions. It can process huge amounts of video data captured by dozens of cameras installed at each EPL football stadium.
How it really works
Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are a variety of deep learning algorithm specifically designed for processing and understanding image and video content. They play a key role within the operation of SAOT.
CNNs analyze images by running them through what's called a multi-stage hierarchical process. Layers within the early stages of processing extract basic features from the image, akin to edges, spots, and corners, while layers further down aggregate these features and group them into spatially larger, more conceptually meaningful categories.
When applied to surface point tracking, as within the case of Genius Sports' computer vision technology, the CNNs are customized and trained to provide an estimate of the spatial coordinates of every point on a player's body and the ball for every streamed image.
But first, the AI ​​system must be “trained” – that’s, it must be fed multiple examples of what it is going to search for with a view to improve its performance of those tasks. This training process, which is basically automatic, is demanding for computers – but once accomplished, the system can provide real-time predictions for SAOT.
VAR won’t ever be perfect
Continuous advances in AI research and development are pushing the boundaries of many elements of sports data analytics. The application of SAOT to top-level football matches is an impressive example of using the newest technology.
The rollout of SAOT is ready to start in October 2024 once EPL chiefs are satisfied it meets requirements. EPL head of football Tony Scholes said VAR “never be perfect”However, the introduction of SAOT will likely move closer to that goal and potentially help the technology gain wider acceptance amongst the vast majority of fans.
Many fans say they’re for VAR whether it is improvedIn addition to the time needed for decisions, it’s criticized that the Joy of the fansto scale back the spontaneity of goal celebrations and perceived pedantry in marginal decisions.
The use of VAR by the EPL was even placed on the agenda. scrapped by Wolverhampton Wanderers at a gathering of Premier League clubs at the tip of the 2022-23 season – but Wolves lost that vote 19-1.
